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ITK Kiritsuke | A few words and pics

Hey all! So I grabbed up one of the Tojiro ITK Kiritsukes and thought I'd give you a few thoughts on the knife.

I was excited to order this blade. I don't make a ton of money (I'm a pasta maker) so I'm always looking for a well preforming knife at a reasonable price point. You know, a good value knife. And this was my first introduction to White steel. I am a big push cutter and my daily beater in the pro kitchen is a Dojo Nikiri. The Dojo is amazing and always serves me well. It will demolish a pile of onions, hold an edge for just about ever and it's butter-easy to resharpen. Love, love, love the knife. So the idea of, in my words, of an over-sized Nikiri with a slight curve in the tip really appealed to me. Here's what I found.

My first impression of the ITK when I opened the box was the kurouchi finish is rough. When I picked it up, the handle and plastic ferrule felt quite cheap. Like $10 wa-handled knife from china town cheap. The factory OOTB edge was quite sharp and cut well. Unfortunately, the grind had several severe high and low spots on the edge. The spine is thick at the handle, around 4mm, but thins out very quickly towards the nose and edge. Very thin behind the edge. I would not call it laser-ish, but it is very thin and doesn't bend. In the hand, it feels light and relatively nimble for it's 240 length.

After using it stock for a day or two at work, the over-grinds were making me hate life. Accordion effect on everything with a skin. The knife literally felt like it had three parts to the edge with a clunky tip-mid-heel transition as you would rock the knife. A word of warning, I have never done what I was about to do. But made sense to me and I like to learn through trial and error, so I went for it. I ground the edge down by holding the knife at 90 degree angle to my 140x diamond plate. I removed the holes in the edge and worked it until it rocked smoothly on a flat surface. It couldn't have worked better. Holes and clunky transitions gone. Then I re-beveled, thinned slightly and sharpened the bastarde. I have the usual 500/1200/5000 bestor/rika lineup with a imanishi 10,000 finisher. Then I strop with 1m Boron Carbide on blasa and .5m CBN on nano cloth. MUCH much better and silly sharp now. I also started to remove the not-so-nice kurochi, which is still a work in progress. And I put an edge on the front spine of the knife. You know, the transition spine that connects the top spine to the edge. With all that work done, the knife is sharp and fun to use. But whoa was it some work hours wise.

In the end, you get what you pay for. And for $80 you do get what you pay for. Good steel, craptastic handle and low F&F. If you want a project knife, this ITK Kiritsuke would fit the bill, as work must be done to it before using it imho. For me, I'm having a great time with it and I'm glad I bought it.